The Numismatic Chronicle 171 Offprint - Royal Numismatic Society

100
RICHARD SCHAEFER and ANDREW McCABE
easily be distinguished from a number of other Star asses and semisses, which are
artistically less competent and are of slightly lower weight standard although their
weights do overlap with the bronzes of good style. The style of these other pieces,
RRC 196/1 and 196/2 (Figs 3, 4), coincides with that of the other Period 2 bronze
issues (for example RRC 192, 193, 194 and 195). So d’Ailly had reached the point
of distinguishing two different issues of Star bronzes.
Fig. 1: Period 1 as Fig. 2: Period 1 semis
Fig. 3: Period 2 as Fig. 4: Period 2 semis
Fractional Star bronzes are all rare except for the very common quadrantes with
star before the prow. D’Ailly divides the corpus into various styles but does not
propose any specifi c arrangement. However, since he notes that the star-before
quadrantes are lighter and more erratically engraved (Figs 12, 13), this is generally
taken to mean that they are to be associated with Period 2 asses and semisses.
D’Ailly did not notice that among the many lower-weight star-before quadrantes in
his own collection there were four that were of higher weight and in style equal to
the fi ne-style (Period 1) asses and semisses. When the star-before quadrantes were
assigned to Period 2, by association the other star-before fractions became linked to
the Period 2 asses and semisses, and, by default, fractions with star above the prow
were linked to the Period 1 fi ne-style series. The arrangement is easy to use, the large
denominations being distinguished on the grounds of Period 1 or 2 style, and the
smaller star-before denominations classifi ed to Period 2 and, by default, star-above
to Period 1.
Crawford does not dispute this arrangement. For RRC 113, he illustrates the as.
For RRC 196 he illustrates the as and the quadrans, although the quadrans which
he uses, the key coin in the story, is of a different and fi ner style than that usually
encountered.